THERESA MAY has rightly faced harsh opposition from across the political spectrum for her proposed Brexit deal, which, as Jeremy Corbyn has said, “is a bad deal for the country … the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds.” And that is why Labour will oppose this deal in Parliament.

While much attention is understandably focused on this issue, which is so vital for our future, it is not just in this area that the government has shown again and again that it is incapable of governing in the interests of the majority of people, as two shocking recent developments have demonstrated.

The first was a report by United Nations poverty envoy Philip Alston, based on a two-week fact-finding mission, which delivers a damning indictment of Tory austerity from start to finish.

It says the government has inflicted “great misery” on people with “punitive, mean-spirited and often callous” cuts, driven by a political desire to undertake social re-engineering rather than economic necessity.

He calls current levels of child poverty “not just a disgrace but a social calamity and an economic disaster.”

About 14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty and 1.5 million are destitute, highlighting predictions child poverty may rise by 7 percentage points between 2015 and 2022, possibly  as high as 40 per cent.

Furthermore, the report says austerity Britain is in breach of four UN human rights agreements, relating to disabled people, women, children and economic and social rights.

Echoing the concerns of equality campaigners, Mr Alston says: “If you got a group of misogynists in a room and said how can we make this system work for men and not for women, they would not have come up with too many ideas that are not already in place.”

Alongside this, cuts of 50 per cent to council funding are “damaging the fabric” of society, he warns, yet the government is in a state of denial, with a “striking disconnect” between what ministers and ordinary people said.

Then, hot on the heels of these revelations, we found out that we will see the busiest Christmas ever for foodbanks as the universal credit roll-out comes to an end, having forced thousands of people into poverty.

Volunteers are expecting to distribute 1.5 million meals to desperate people, possibly including a shocking 590,598 children.

Figures showed a 49 per cent surge in demand at Trussell Trust foodbanks last December compared with the rest of the year.

The charity distributed 159,388 emergency parcels, each containing enough food for three meals a day for three days, in the run-up to and over the 2017 festive period – that’s 1,4 million meals and a 10 per cent surge from the year before.

It’s time this government opened its eyes to the misery it is causing and immediately stopped the universal credit roll-out.

And of course, these examples are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to illustrating how Tory austerity is breaking Britain.
We have a level of homelessness that is nothing short of a national scandal, a deepening cost-of-living crisis, a flowering of insecure zero-hour contracts and much more besides.

In the constituency I represent, Hackney North and Stoke Newington, I hear every day from constituents who are struggling to make ends meet, who are victims of the housing crisis or can’t find social care for themselves or relatives.

And with relation to my brief as shadow home secretary, each week we hear more warnings about police cuts that are making our communities and young people less safe, with it becoming clearer by the day that by slashing the policing budget again and again, the government has pushed police forces into crisis.

These cuts – which the Tories are committed to sticking with – have been so deep that we recently saw the unprecedented sight of three of Britain’s most senior chief constables (West Midlands, Merseyside and Greater Manchester) warning that any further funding reductions will leave the largest police forces in England and Wales with officer numbers last seen in the 1970s.

Recent Office for National Statistics crime figures show violent crime up by 19 per cent, with knife offences up 12 per cent, the highest level since comparable records began in 2011, yet already overstretched officers are being asked to do even more with even less.

Labour’s leader recently asked the Prime Minister why, “with violent crime rising, police numbers slashed and conviction rates down … did the government fail to find a single penny for neighbourhood policing in the Budget?”

But in this and so many other policy areas, the Tories are determined to press on with their ideologically driven agenda, whatever the human cost.

In the light of their botched Brexit deal, calls are growing both for the Tories to step aside and for a general election to be called. Real change couldn’t be more needed.

The reality is that, as the aforementioned revelations show, we simply can’t afford the Tories and their failed austerity anymore. It is time for a Corbyn-led Labour government that will invest in our future.